The document discusses how the student used conventions and challenged conventions in their music video for Coldplay's "The Scientist". They incorporated common narrative and editing techniques but also included unique stop motion scenes drawing lyrics. Audience feedback helped tweak the video and informed the album packaging design, ensuring appeal and understandability. A variety of media technologies were used at different stages, including cameras, editing software, and design programs.

1. A2 Music Video Evaluation
Christie Alderson

2. In what ways does you media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
 My media product is a concept and narrative music video
for the ‘The Scientist’ by ‘Coldplay’. Because of the songs
down beat tone and romantic lyrics I used most of the
conventions for the music video genre that fitted
however I also used different techniques to make the
video unique to others.
 According to Andrew Goodwin’s ‘Dancing in the
Distraction Factory’ theory generally most music videos
for rock and pop songs show a strong narrative which
have various links to the lyrics of the song which also
have a unique concept to stand out from other videos.
Because ‘The Scientist’ is a pop/rock song and these
conventions are so fixed I chose to include many of the
same conventions for the music video that I was
creating.

3. In what ways does you media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
 The narrative of my music video is of a young couple who
break up and focusses on the effects of this on the
protagonist (the ex-boyfriend) which is a very common
element in that genre of music, so I just used that
convention. Another convention that I used was focussing
on the narrative as a very significant element of the music
video to be used as the basis for the entire thing, which is
often the case for most music videos with a romantic
narrative.
 To adhere to the depressing tone of the song and the
narrative, the editing was kept quite simple; fades were
used between some scenes which suggests a loss of time
and to fit with the slow tempo of the song, cuts were used
on the beats of the music to show a relation to the song
and some flash effects were used to suggest a flashback to
the past.

4. In what ways does you media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
 Despite mainly using conventions of
that specific music video genre I did
include a concept idea that is quite
unique and challenges most
conventions for that genre.
 Most pop/rock music videos are solely
live action videos but I included a few
stop motion scenes where there was a
very literal interpretation of the lyrics
being drawn in a book. This concept
broke the conventions of the genre that
were established earlier in my music
video and used to give a more
understandable display of the lyrics and
the narrative of the video to the target
audience.
 This stop motion concept is quite
unique to the pop/rock music video
genre as it is something that you would
expect more from the indie genre, so it
challenges the conventions of the
genre.

5. In what ways does you media product
use, develop or challenge forms and conventions
of real media products?
 I also went against Todorov’s narrative theory with the
story of the video, rather than beginning the video with
equilibrium between the couple it begins with the
disruption of the equilibrium and the equilibrium isn’t
regained by the end of the narrative. I chose to do this
in order to challenge the audience and make them
slightly uncomfortable as it will be more memorable, this
is because Todorov’s theory can be applied to most
music videos of this genre.
 In order to appeal to my target audience who often
watch music videos, I mainly decided to stick to most of
the conventions of the genre but added a unique feature
to stand out and make it memorable.

6. How effective is the combination of your
main product and ancillary texts?
 The effectiveness of my main product which was the
scientists by Coldplay music video and my two
ancillary tasks in the form of an album art work design
and a magazine advert to advertise the album went
really well. Throughout the two ancillary tasks I tried
to keep similar conventions and themes in the forms
of colours and images so that it would make the
products more recognisable to a consumer and make
it look more professional.

7. How effective is the combination of your
main product and ancillary texts?
 To the left you can see two images
the one nearest the edge of the page
is the front of my album booklet and
it is of our galaxy. To get a similar
trend throughout my design work I
used the colours in the Milky Way on
my advertisement in the magazine as
I thought the colours made it look
eye catching and I was still using the
same colours throughout my designs.
 These colours are used throughout
my ancillary tasks. We also came up
with the name Fluke records in the
bottom right of the magazine to help
add realism.

8. How effective is the combination of your
main product and ancillary texts?
 With the continuous trend in my ancillary tasks
and main product but similar lighting and colours I
think it helps to create an effective combination.
Also the use of props found in the video and in the
ancillary tasks again helps to create a good
combination between the products.
 Another key convention used in both ancillary
tasks is the tape seen on the magazine in the
picture above as it is also used in in the album
artwork as it’s my front cover for the album, this is
good effective combination as it makes the
products look joined and helps to create a brand
identity for our label record Fluke records so that if
this was really being sold it would make the album
easily recognisable by the fan, by similar use of
graphics and style. And also the use of the records

9. What have you learned from your audience
feedback?
 Audience feedback was an integral part of our project
because without it doesn’t think I could have created a
music video and digipak that would suit the audience so
well and be so successful.
 As part of our research into our music video we
produced a questionnaire which was to highlight what
demographic group and age range our music video
would best suit from this feedback we established that
our music video would be aimed at teens to early 30`s
from the mixed group of people that we got to complete
the questionnaire on our video idea. From this we
produced an effective music video aimed at this age
group and both genders.

10. What have you learned from your
audience feedback?
 We then used audience feedback to tweak our video
before fully publishing it which helped a lot as the
audience said the flashbacks were not clear enough and
were not long enough and from this we changed the
flashbacks to make them clearer this then meant 96% of
people understood the concept of the video after one
watch as compared to nearly half the test group didn`t
understand. This was vital to the success of the video
because it wouldn`t be good if most people didn`t
understand the concept.

11. What have you learned from your audience
feedback?
 Before I began work on our digipak and poster I did seem
preliminary research into existing album artwork and
posters to get a rough idea of what our demographic and
age group would expect, this helped me because I could
then ask I selection of people from our audience of what
appealed to them, and gave me some examples of their
favourites, from this I was able to produce a digipak and
poster that appealed to a wider audience.
 I also showed them some examples of existing poster to
get an idea of what stood out to them the most and to
see what layout they liked so that I didn`t miss out on
key conventions used in posters to catch the audiences
eye which then lead to the Artist name and album title as
the main features as well as a seller as a key icon so they
know where to buy it I used the Kooks magazine cover as
a rough basis as a lot of the audience feedback said that
they liked this one as it was simple, told them what they
needed to know and had a good image, also the HMV logo
was good as it gave them a strong recognisable brand
behind the band.

12. What have you learned from your audience
feedback?
 Without audience feedback I don’t feel that our digipak
or especially our poster would be successful because
with them we wouldn’t have been able to differentiate
the different music promotional adverts and which would
suit our audience the best so that we could get
maximum appeal.

13. How did you use media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
 Throughout the project I had to use quite a few different
types of technologies to create certain things. Most of
those media technologies that I used were used during
the construction stages for the music video and ancillary
tasks.
 The most important media technology that was used
for creating the video was a Sony HD digital video
camera as it was used to film the footage that would be
used in the music video. The camera was used to create
many different types of shots and used with a tripod in
order to achieve steady shots that would be clean and
appear professional; the footage was then uploaded onto
a video editing program for the post production stage.

14. How did you use media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
 Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11.0 was the most
important program that I used as it was used in the post
production stage to edit the music video. I had to learn how
to use the program from scratch with using effects, cutting
and splitting clips and many other features. Audacity 1.3
was also used in the post production stage to edit the audio
of the song by cutting a long instrumental sequence and
create a fade at the end; this would make a seamless and
shorter video to appeal to the target audience.
 For the research and planning stages Microsoft Word and
Internet Explorer were the main things I used. Internet
Explorer was used to research many things such as other
music videos which would be used for comparisons and
inspiration while Microsoft Word was used to analyse
different things and to record the production stage which
would then be uploaded to Blogger.

15. How did you use media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
 For creating the ancillary products in the production stage
quite a few different programs were used. Adobe InDesign
was the main program that was used for creating the CD
case and booklet as well as the magazine advert; it was
used for editing text and images in a way to make it look
professional. Adobe Fireworks was also used when creating
the ancillary tasks. It was used mainly for editing images to
fit in with the designs and resizing.
 During the evaluation stage I used Microsoft PowerPoint as
I would later upload it onto SlideShare with would then in
turn be uploaded onto my blog. Blogger is a very important
part of the project as everything that I have created will be
uploaded onto it. Images, videos and text are all uploaded
onto my Blogger account to show a complete project and
show the process of production.